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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28520088">To Have Loved, Most Extravagantly</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/proudspires/pseuds/proudspires'>proudspires</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A girl with moderate knowledge of Far Cry 5 decides to write more non-canon garbage, Alcohol/Drug Use, Awkward Family Dinners, Canon Divergent, F/M, Morally ambiguous protagonists, Shameless Smut, Some pre-established relationships, Some religious blasphemy, The Seed brothers need a warning in and of themselves, pre-cult au</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:20:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,125</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28520088</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/proudspires/pseuds/proudspires</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In most things, John Seed is very certain. His work, his life—they operate on a set of rules and structures, by which he never fails. </p>
<p>Elliot Honeysett is not most things.</p>
<p>(Canon Divergent Pre-Cult AU; a collection of loosely-tied drabbles from various tumblr requests and my own self-indulgent desires. Warnings will be updated every chapter.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Seed/Original Female Character(s), Joseph Seed/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. wrap me around your fingertips</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! There's no excuse for this, except for that my dear friend Raven sent me one (1) prompt that has now spiraled into an AU that I love. She's also a great writer with a story of her own; please check it out if you have the time! You can find her <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlewritingraven">here on AO3</a>.</p>
<p>This is entirely self-indulgent, pre-cult AU, there will be multiple relationships explored, and I hope you enjoy the suffering of awkward family dinners and navigating familial relationships as much as I do.</p>
<p>The prompts for this were “make me forget” + breakup sex, </p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It just really didn’t make any sense.</p>
<p>“John.”</p>
<p><em>I don’t get it,</em> he thought, clicking out of the same email he’d just clicked into for the last five minutes. </p>
<p>“Johnny.”</p>
<p><em>I’m a catch.</em> Rich, successful, obviously undeniably handsome. So it didn’t stand to any kind of reason why he’d just… Heard nothing from the girl he’d been seeing. No response to text messages, nothing, and then a picture on social media of her with another man. He wasn’t <em>desperate</em>,  so it wasn’t like he’d called her or anything to see why her taste in men had suddenly devolved and so rapidly, but—</p>
<p>John was only vaguely aware of the sound of heels clipping smartly against the marbled floor of the office; the door to his office shut with a definitive click. He sighed, brushing his fingers along the bridge of his nose as the smell of the expensive perfume his firm partner favored wafted over him, and he glanced up to see the familiar face of Isolde Khan bearing down on him.</p>
<p>“Jonathan.”</p>
<p>“Sol, we’ve been business partners for two years and you’ve been fucking my brother for four,” John sighed, “you <em>know</em> that isn’t my name.”</p>
<p>The brunette sat herself on the edge of his desk, ankles crossed and palms flat on the wooden top. “You’ve been sighing and sulking in here the entire afternoon,” Isolde told him, “and while normally I would be fine with your pain and suffering, our offices are directly across from each other and I can’t close my door because it gets too hot in there because you won’t let me take Joseph up on his offer to fix it—”</p>
<p>“Because he will <em>never</em> get around to fixing it, Joseph does <em>not</em> know how to fix an air conditioner, and he will just come here to make eyes at you.”</p>
<p>“—so I’ve had to listen to it for <em>literal</em> hours,” she finished, breezing over his comment. “What’s the deal?”</p>
<p>“Nothing.” John replied tartly, and then after a moment under Sol’s brutal gaze, “There’s this girl and she—” </p>
<p>Isolde stifled a noise that he <em>knew</em> had to be a scoff. He looked at her, his expression flattening. “Okay, if you’re going to roll your eyes so hard you might fucking pass out, we can be done with this little heart-to-heart.”</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” she insisted, sounding not very sorry at all. It was very Isolde to apologize and not sound like she meant it in the least—not even a little bit, not even an ounce, and truly John thought on more than one occasion that patience must be next to Godliness, not cleanliness, because he didn’t know how Joseph did it.</p>
<p>The brunette plunged on, “It’s just—I don’t know, John? You’ve been fucking around for a while, and now a girl’s got you in the dumps? Just find another one.”</p>
<p><em>Just find another one,</em> Isolde said, like getting ghosted wasn’t shitty enough that he then needed to go back out and filter through potential partners to find someone he didn’t need to get fucking wasted to enjoy.</p>
<p>“Oh, honey,” she sighed, “have you never been broken up with before? Just pick someone to fuck and you’ll be over it like that.”</p>
<p>“Great,” John snapped, “very helpful. ‘Find someone to fuck’, says the woman dating my brother, who has been begging me to have a more <em>discerning and palatable</em> taste in recreational activities since he’s pursuing a more <em>Godly</em> life—”</p>
<p>Sol puffed out a short breath that was probably her attempt at not laughing. Passing a hand over her face, she pushed herself off of his desk and slapped a hand onto his shoulder. For all of her complaining and blustering, Isolde was probably the closest thing he had to a true friend—though she’d insist otherwise, and that she only tolerated him for Joseph’s sake, he knew it wasn’t all the way true. She’d been his friend first, after all.</p>
<p>“Okay, champ, I’ll take you out,” she announced. “Shut down and grab your coat. C’mon.”</p>
<p>“What, you’re gonna wingman for me?”</p>
<p>“I’m the best wingman,” Isolde informed him coolly. “I’m hot, but approachable, so women feel comfortable coming up to me in clubs and bars. Then, I defer to you if they aren’t boring. Really the greatest act of charity someone could do for you, suffering through that, but I’ll give you a free pass this time and next time you pay my hourly rate.” When he regarded her critically, she sighed. “You’re not going to pick some clingy, stay-the-night-and-get-breakfast-in-the-morning kinda girl, so let me pick for you. That’s the rules.”</p>
<p>She crossed the hall to her office, picking up her keys and swinging her coat on over her shoulders. When she turned back to see him still sitting at his desk, she stifled a long-suffering sound.</p>
<p>“John,” Isolde said, “stop staring at your keyboard, get your fucking ass out of your chair, and let’s go.”</p>
<p>“Fine,” he replied, coming to a stand and grabbing his keys. “But we’re <em>not</em> telling Joseph about this.”</p>
<p>“Are you going to make me pinky swear?”</p>
<p>“You’re so fucking lucky I like you,” John huffed. Isolde regarded him amusedly, grabbing his chin and jostling him playfully.</p>
<p>“No, baby, <em>you’re</em> lucky that you’ve got me to take care of you,” she told him. “ Now shut up and let’s go.”</p>
<p>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p>
<p>The club was exactly the kind of place John would have liked to go when he was feeling put-off, though admittedly the presence of his practically-sister-in-law and business partner made it less enjoyable. Not that Isolde was any kind of buzzkill (aside from, like, taking the piss out of him constantly); the second they got inside, she planted him against the railing that led down to the dancefloor and said, “Don’t move, just—stay here.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” John said, and then she stared at him for a moment. “<em>What</em>, Sol?”</p>
<p>“Could you look a little more pathetic? I don’t think the women are going to pick up that you’re feeling <em>sad</em>.”</p>
<p>“Fuck you,” he snapped over the sound of the music. “Are you going to get me a drink or what?”</p>
<p>“<em>Yes,</em>” she groaned. “God, just—whatever. Maybe it’ll work for you.” And then she was gone, slipping through the crowd expertly—more expertly than, say, a woman running a business and attaching herself to a “pillar of the community” should be, but that was the last thing John was willing to say.</p>
<p>He leaned back against the railing, scanning the crowd idly before turning his eyes back forward and checking his watch. He wasn’t going to people watch, because Isolde was right; she <em>was</em> hot but approachable, and he didn’t want to have to lift a finger to indulge himself in a mindless hook-up, and—</p>
<p>“Hey, uh, excuse me?”</p>
<p>John’s  gaze flickered up to land on a blonde, holding her phone—with a muted call running—and a drink in her hand. She looked lost, or like maybe she was here for more than just trying to squeeze past him to get down to the dancefloor. <em>That’s fine,</em> he thought, casting a quick admiring glance over the night-blue silk slip of a dress she’d donned for the evening, <em>I don’t mind the view.</em></p>
<p>“Can I help you?” he asked, making a quick sweep for Isolde before he turned back to the blonde, leaning down to hear her better. </p>
<p>“Actually,” she said, tilted up to speak close to his ear, “yes. This is going to sound fucking insane—”</p>
<p>“I’m already interested.”</p>
<p>“—but my ex-fiance is on the phone, and I told him I was here with someone thinking it would get him to fuck off,” she continued, “but I’m actually here alone, and he’s not fucking off…”</p>
<p>John blinked and glanced around. In fact, most people were already in groups, or paired off and away doing something; he really might have been the only person readily alone. Wasn’t that a depressing thought.</p>
<p>“You want me to pretend to be the guy you’re with,” he filled in finally. She looked relieved.</p>
<p>“Yeah. He’s on hold. He’s a big fucking asshole.”</p>
<p>“Well, he’s an <em>ex</em>-fiance.”</p>
<p>“So, will you?”</p>
<p>He paused. <em>Let me pick for you.</em> That was the one rule that Isolde had given him, that he wasn’t picking, because she was convinced he had bad taste in women.</p>
<p><em>Fuck it,</em>  he thought. <em>This isn’t like picking.</em> “Sure, why the fuck not?” he replied.</p>
<p>“Oh, thank you,” the blonde said, throwing one arm around his neck and leaning up to hug him. He returned it, hand lingering on the small of her back even when she leaned back, keeping her close, and she didn’t leave; didn’t squirm out from it, didn’t brush him off, but gazed up at him with those big soft doe eyes and pretty little cupid’s bow <em>and and and</em>. John felt his brain fizz out a little and he cleared his throat.</p>
<p>“So what’s our story?” he asked, taking the phone and poising his finger over the unmute button.</p>
<p>“I’m Elliot,” she said. “That’s my real name, not a fake name.”</p>
<p>“I assumed.”</p>
<p>“We met—tonight?” Elliot offered after a minute. “Does that sound believable?”</p>
<p>“You know what? I’m just gonna take care of this,” John announced, flashing her a grin. “How long have you been broken up?”</p>
<p>“A week.”</p>
<p>“Cheated on you?”</p>
<p>She eyed him warily. “Gee, do I have that kind of face or something?”</p>
<p>“Boys love cheating on beautiful women,” John amended, and took a silent pleasure in the way her face lit up scarlet and warm under the lights of the club. Isolde would probably be swinging through any minute, but it was just a little harmless prank on behalf of a pretty girl, right? Just helping out a damsel in distress.</p>
<p>Elliot said, “Yeah, he did.” And then, with a well of disdain in her voice, “His name is Mason.”</p>
<p>John stepped put one finger to his ear to mute out the sound of the club and hit the unmute button the call, lifting the phone to his free side. “Hello?”</p>
<p>A tinny voice rattle through on the other side. <em>“Yeah? Where the fuck is Elliot?”</em></p>
<p>“Hey, buddy,” John greeted gregariously. “Sounds like you’re being a pest.”</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m sorry, who are you?”</em>
</p>
<p>“I’m John.”</p>
<p>
  <em>“Okay, John, that’s my fucking fiance, and I’m gonna need you to listen up real quick—”</em>
</p>
<p>“Uh, well, here’s the problem: it’s really loud in here,” John told him, “so I can’t really hear you, but how about I give you a call in about, uh—an hour and a half? Maybe two? Ell’s pretty tense, which makes me think you’ve actually never gotten her off before, so I’m gonna take care of that first and then… I mean, I could call you during?”</p>
<p>
  <em>“What the fuck do you—”</em>
</p>
<p>“Like, if you wanted pointers? On how to make a woman <em>come?”</em> John reiterated into the phone. “Hello? Matthew? Buddy?”</p>
<p>
  <em>“—fucking piece of shit, I’m gonna come down there—”</em>
</p>
<p>“Sorry, pal, you’re breaking up. Tell you what; I’m gonna go take care of her and then next round, I’ll have her loop you in. Phone’s probably best, so keep it on you. Bye-bye now.”</p>
<p>He hit the red end call button, and then went ahead and blocked the number as well before handing the phone back to her. She looked exceptionally pleased, idly sipping her drink through the straw as she slipped the phone back into her purse. John fingers brushed the crook of her elbow to tug her close again, leaning in—this close, he could smell the faint scent of lavender coming off of her. “I blocked him. You should have done that to start off with, you know.”</p>
<p>Elliot’s lips brushed his ear when she asked, “What’d you say to him? I only heard the first part.”</p>
<p>He laughed, and then replied, “That he probably hasn’t ever gotten you off before, that I’m going to take care of that. Some other stuff, mostly for the theatrics. I think he’ll either be really pissed off or he’ll fuck off.”</p>
<p>There was a little pause, where Elliot was shuffled closer to get out of the way of oncoming foot traffic; her body heat was radiating against him, and she rolled her lower lip between her teeth before she said, “You’re right.”</p>
<p>John’s gaze slid to her, and he cocked his head to the side inquisitively. “He hasn’t,” she clarified, still speaking close to be heard over the thrumming base. “Gotten me off, before.”</p>
<p><em>Oh,</em> he thought, eyes watching the way the silk of her dress clung to every inch of her. <em>Not even once? That’s criminal.</em></p>
<p>He asked, “Do you want to?”</p>
<p>“Want to what?”</p>
<p>Isolde was going to be pissed, probably. He said, “Get off.”</p>
<p><em>“Oh,”</em> Elliot said, going pink again. She glanced at her phone for a second, seeming to mull it over before she said, “Let’s get out of here.”</p>
<p>He grinned. A pleasant little thrill went racing down his spine. “Yeah?”</p>
<p>“Yes, but first—” She paused, looking at the crowds of people passing them by, not quite meeting his eye. “You have to kiss me. I have to make sure you’re a good kisser before I skip out on an entire club of—”</p>
<p>John reached up and tilted her face back to his with his fingers, leaning in and kissing her. There was a quick moment where she stilled, like she hadn’t been expecting it, and then she leaned in too; her hand smoothed along the front of his shirt and then curled there, like she was going to make sure he didn’t pull away. She tasted just as sweet as he thought she would, too—vanilla chapstick and lavender, and a little like the vodka soda she’d been sipping, too.</p>
<p>The blonde tilted closer, until there was no space left between their bodies, and John’s hands went to her hips; gripping there against the silk fabric of her dress, he thought, <em>fuck, it’d be so easy to just push this up,</em> and her lips parted under his just as she leaned back against the railing.</p>
<p>Trapped there, between his body and the metal, she said against his mouth, “Okay, we can get out of here.”</p>
<p>“You sure?” John asked, thumbing the slope of her hip. “You don’t want me to give you more samples of my work? Taste test a little more?”</p>
<p>“We can taste test,” she told him, “somewhere else.”</p>
<p>“Okay, bossy.” He grinned, and leaned in to kiss her again. “Anything you want.”</p>
<p>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p>
<p>The taxi ride back to his loft was excruciating. In part, because he knew that Isolde was going to be looking for him, and in part because having Elliot sitting next to him in the back seat had the hem of her dress riding up, revealing more and more stretches of skin that were just <em>begging</em> for his attention; if it bothered her, she didn’t make mention of it, but rather busied herself with tucking her phone away in her purse, like she didn’t know quite what to do with her hands.</p>
<p>“I’m not usually—” she started.</p>
<p>“You were engaged,” he replied. “I can assume you don’t do this often.”</p>
<p>The blonde blushed. John continued, “If it’s any consolation—I also went through a break up recently.” Like, today, but she didn’t need to know that. “So it’s a…”</p>
<p>“Symbiotic relationship?” Elliot supplied.</p>
<p>“<em>Very</em> sexy,” he agreed gravely. “But yes.”</p>
<p>Tilting her head prettily—John felt like he could maybe recognize the movement in something like a jungle cat—Elliot propped her head up against the window with her hand and said, “So how am I <em>beneficial</em> to you, John?”</p>
<p>He hummed. The taxi turned down the street to his building. “Well, for one,” he began, skimming his fingers along the inside of her thigh, “this dress is my favorite color, and it’s <em>definitely</em> your color. I especially like how easy it is to just… Slip it wherever I want it.”</p>
<p>“And that’s beneficial to you,” Elliot said, less a question, as his fingers ducked beneath the hem of her dress and climbed further up. She didn’t stop his hand on it’s leisurely ascension, but he did feel the way her body shifted towards him, as though to make it easier for him.</p>
<p>“Very,” John agreed. He watched the way her lashes fluttered when his fingers found the hem of her underwear and toyed with it. “I’m a simple man, Elliot. Easy to <em>please</em>.”</p>
<p>The taxi slid to a stop. John’s hand retreated, and he was pleased to see that his own disappointment at the quick end to the ride was reflected back in her expression. As he slid out of the car and helped her out, he slid his arm around her waist and nudged her forward, walking her into the quiet lobby. A quick wave to the night guard and they were in the lobb; the doors sliding shut with a quiet hiss and leaving them in a pleasant vacuum of quiet.</p>
<p>What happened between the elevator doors closing and them reopening on his floor was almost nonexistent in his brain. John could directly recall saying something along the lines of <em>your fiance seems nice</em>, and catching her eye just for her to remind him that he was an <em>ex</em>. He <em>distinctly</em> could remember the strap of her dress sliding down her shoulder, tugging the front of her dress with it—not anything scandalous, but enough for him to feel like that motion had somehow revealed so much more of her to him, and thinking, <em>I want my mouth there</em>.</p>
<p>So he kissed her. And kissed her, and kissed her, until the elevator doors opened and he’d pulled her into his loft and done exactly that thing that he’d wanted; dragged his mouth down to the slope of her collarbone, and lower still, sighing against her skin. Elliot made a soft, stifled sound as her hands fumbled absently in the dark, unfamiliar area, trying to steady them as they moved before they reached the bedroom.</p>
<p>John’s hands guided her to the bed, and she went willingly; laid back against his sheets, he took just a second to admire it—honey-blonde hair all fanned out, her cheeks flushed, her lips kiss-reddened and the silk of her dress all bunched, she was just about the most delicious thing he’d seen in a while.</p>
<p>Elliot said, a little breathlessly, “John,” but there was no follow up; he slid to his knees between her legs and pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh. She sighed, and the sound bridged on an almost-noise, something a little more solid than a sigh alone.</p>
<p>“Bet you make the most gorgeous sounds,” he growled, dragging his hand up her thigh to push the skirt of her dress up again. Elliot’s fingers had tangled into his hair, and when he let his mouth wander up further, her breath hitched in her chest. He slid his fingers along the curve of her slowly—dragging against the silky fabric of her underwear inquisitively, testing, and she whimpered.</p>
<p><em>His</em> name.</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>pretty</em> baby,” John said, his voice rough with want as he slid his arms under her to pull her closer. “Already so wet for me, too.” Her baby blues had gone dark and dreamy with want. She made another soft sound when he dragged his fingers against her, thumbing her, and he covered her mouth.</p>
<p>“Wait,” she murmured silkily, spiking the heat in his blood. “You don’t have to—”</p>
<p>John heard his phone vibrate somewhere in the kitchen where he’d dropped it; it was probably Isolde, wondering where the fuck he’d gone. He should have thought to text her, but he knew that would have been about impossible to do; all he could think about was Elliot, and the way she smelled, and the way she sounded, and how <em>fucking wet</em> she was when he pushed her underwear aside and pressed a finger into her. </p>
<p>“I know I don’t have to eat you out. I want to.” His gaze flickered up to hers, and he said. “I’m going to make you forget all about that boy of yours.”</p>
<p>In the dark, he could see the way her lips parted, breath stuttering prettily and her hips arching for him, desperate for more. When he added a second, her nails dug into his shoulder and she made a delicious sound.</p>
<p>“God,” she moaned, her voice pulling tight at his words and tighter still when he slowed his movements; he beckoned against her, and she made a soft, desperate little sound. “Fuck, I—”</p>
<p>John planted a trail of kisses along the inside of her thigh; when his teeth dragged the tiny scrap of fabric she had left between herself and him, she squirmed, encouraging him to dispose of it. He fixed her with his gaze and said, “Tell me what you want, baby. I want to hear you.”</p>
<p>Propped up on her elbows, Elliot’s lashes fluttered and she said breathlessly, “<strong>Make me forget</strong>, John.”</p>
<p>There was a delicious, desperate edge to her voice when he dragged the fabric down and pressed his mouth to her, flattening and dragging his tongue. Feeling the way the gesture made her tremble was close to too much, even just like this—like all this time she’d been teasing him without even hardly trying, with her eyes and the slip of her strap and the way she’d leaned in to say, <em>let’s get out of here</em>, and now he was having to pay the consequences.</p>
<p>“You taste so fucking good,” he groaned. He was <em>aching</em> for her, but he wanted her like this, too—wicked and wanting. “I wanted to taste you from the minute I saw you in this tight little fucking dress. God, I just can’t wait to be inside you.”</p>
<p>“Please,” she murmured, her voice hazy with want and urgent, “yes, please—I want you—”</p>
<p>He thought, <em>oh, no, we’re not finishing that quickly. </em>Her words were strangled by another moan when John put his mouth back on her, watching her through half-lidded eyes as he ate her out, slowly pushing his fingers into her in time with the movements of his tongue. Everything felt like it was too much and not enough all at once; the way her hips squirmed under the pressure of his hand, the way she carded her fingers through his hair and grounded herself there, the way she sighed his name like he was something holy. When she pulled hard enough to make starbursts of pain and pleasure to erupt behind his eyes, and he felt her desperation, a low, hungry noise came out of him, against her softness.</p>
<p><em>John</em> came out of her mouth louder this time, her fingers knotting and twisting in his hair and her hips lifted to meet his mouth, and then he felt it—her unraveling, the delicious, wrecked moan that came out of her and her shallowed, breathless panting. When he pulled back from her, he heard a soft little sound of disappointment come out of her.</p>
<p> "Poor thing,“ he murmured, studying the flush in her cheeks and the part of her lips as he came to a stand. His tongue swiped along his lower lip, tasting what remained of her. "Hasn’t that old ex-fiance of yours ever eaten you out?”</p>
<p>Hooking her fingers in the front of his shirt, Elliot pulled him down on the bed; there was just a second of weight-shifting before she was straddling his lap and working to undo the buttons of his shirt, her mouth on his. Her movements were slower now, less urgent, and there was a dreamy cloudiness to her gaze; <em>sated</em>, though he was far from done with her.</p>
<p>“You’re chatty,” she said against his mouth. “Do you always talk this much?”</p>
<p>“I’m going to take that as a no,” John replied with a grin, teeth catching her lower lip as he assist in the removal of his clothes. Her dress came off just as easily as he thought it would—slipped off right over her head, and she was kissing him; hard, and a little punishing, and he could feel the intoxicating drag of her right against him.</p>
<p>“I should—” he started, reaching to still her movements.</p>
<p>“Holy <em>shit</em>,” Elliot groaned, “are you going to fuck me or not? I’m clean, it’s safe, if you are then—”</p>
<p>The words sent wicked, wretched heat sprinting straight up his spine, instantly fogging his brain at the sound of Elliot saying <em>are you going to fuck me?</em> He buried his face into her neck and let her decide the pace of it as he guided her down against him, shifting and letting her sink lower and lower until he was buried in her, her breath shivering against his temple and her nails digging into his shoulder.</p>
<p>“God, fuck—” He barely managed to keep his voice steady, and even <em>then</em>… “How are you so fucking tight—”</p>
<p>“<em>John,</em>” Elliot said, her voice just a little too breathless and edged to be anything else than desirous. He lifted his head, gripping her hip with one hand as he rocked into her.</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>fuck</em> yeah,” he hissed, his voice low, and she whimpered. “This is what you—needed, huh? Just needed me inside you? You got a little—<em>bratty</em> there for a minute, might need to find a way to occupy that mouth of yours.”</p>
<p>There was a heartbeat where Elliot fixed him with her dark, wanton eyes. Instinctively, he lifted his fingers, and she parted her lips for him; she took two into her mouth and whimpered around them, her bubblegum-pink tongue velvet against his skin, just as she canted her hips down against his.</p>
<p>John moaned. Her tongue flickered against his fingers, and he pushed into her, the competing heat of her mouth almost short-circuiting his brain.</p>
<p>“Absolutely filthy,” he panted, fucking her in a hungry, haphazard way, not willing to slow himself down to really enjoy it and drag it out. It didn’t help that Elliot was dictating the pace—riding him, her teeth scraping against his knuckles. His fingers in her mouth stifled her sounds, just enough that he could hear them over his own pleasantly short breath. “God, fuck, you are so—<em>wicked</em>—”</p>
<p>Elliot’s lips parted again, and John’s fingers fell out of her mouth. She kissed him—her movements stuttered a little, breaking the hungry, chaotic pace she had set for them.</p>
<p>“Please,” she moaned, “please, John, I’m—so close, feels so good, <em>you</em> feel so good—”</p>
<p>He couldn’t catch his breath, the hitch of her voice against his mouth enough to send his mind sputtering, let alone the way she was slotting her hips against his. “Yes, <em>fuck</em>—come for me, Elliot, my good girl, absolutely fucking filthy and just for me.”</p>
<p>He felt her tighten around him, <em>tighttighttight</em>, sending heat sprinting straight up his spine and into his nervous system. His hand slid down between them to drag his thumb against the most sensitive part of her; when she came a second time, John smothered her desperate, unraveling moan with his mouth, fingers biting into her hips. </p>
<p>He hoped he left bruises, so that she would think of him every time she saw them in the mirror, so that someone would ask her where they came from.</p>
<p>Elliot now sported the languid, delicious look of a woman sated, and as she leaned back to look at him and let him fuck her through her climax, he thought maybe she looked more wicked than doe-like.</p>
<p>“John,” she whimpered, twisting her fingers in his hair, and then said wickedly, “you make me feel so good, more than—more than anyone—”</p>
<p>“<em>Fuck,</em>” he ground out as his control rapidly dissolved. “Fuck, that’s <em>so</em>—where do you—want me to—”</p>
<p>“You can—if you want.” She kissed him, hot and open-mouthed, and said, “It’s safe—I mean, the—I have the—”</p>
<p>He had no longer the good sense to try and muddle through the disjointed pieces of what she was saying; just the sound of her voice telling that no one made her feel like he did was enough to lurch him right over the edge, finishing with a wrenching iteration of her name from somewhere deep in the cavity of his chest.</p>
<p>It was hot in the room. Hot, and Elliot’s breath fanned against his temple, and he was buried in the heat of her while the aftershocks of pleasure rolled along his body. He skimmed his fingers up along the slope of her spine. Each brush of his fingers had her shivering  a little, reminding him over and over again how closely intertwined they were.</p>
<p>“You’re safe?” he asked, for clarification, because he knew that one way or another it was going to come up. Elliot nodded, still catching her breath.</p>
<p>“Yes, no babies, please.”</p>
<p>John laughed against her skin. Pulling back, he shifted for a moment and then laid back against the bed so that he could get a real good look at her like this—kiss-reddened and flushed and thoroughly fucked, she was dizzyingly attractive.</p>
<p>“Should I go?” Elliot asked after a moment as his hand skimmed along the slope of her hip.</p>
<p>“Why?” John asked. “I promised your ex that I’d let him sit in via phone on the next round. You know, for pointers.”</p>
<p>Her eyes glittered amusedly, and she was compliant as he shifted his weight against her to lay her back on the bed, nuzzling the hollow of her throat.</p>
<p>Elliot said, “Did you really?”</p>
<p>“I did,” John replied lightly. “How long were you two engaged?”</p>
<p>“Oh,” she murmured, “I don’t want to discuss <em>that. </em>Talk about a fucking mood-killer.”</p>
<p>“I’m just wondering how long it was that he hadn’t made you finish.”</p>
<p>“Long enough,” she clarified. “Why don’t we talk about <em>your</em> break-up, hm?”</p>
<p>The laugh came out of him before he could stop it; he kissed the slope of her jaw, and then the corner of her mouth. “Baby, the only thing I want to talk about is how many more times I’m going to make you come.” She made a sweet sound at that, and he said, “Now, be a <em>good girl</em> for me and go hunt down your phone?”</p>
<p>She regarded him for a moment, the corners of her mouth ticking upward in a smile.</p>
<p>“Well,” Elliot replied demurely, “if you insist.”</p>
<p>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p>
<p>Normally, John didn’t let a partner sleep over.</p>
<p>Not if it wasn’t more than a one-night-stand, which was kind of precedent they had set with this one. A rebound hook-up. Break-up sex. That kind of thing didn’t typically entail letting a woman sleep over—but by the time they were done, it was so close to morning, and Elliot smelled like him, and she fit so perfectly against his chest, that—</p>
<p>Well, he’d <em>told</em> her he was a simple man.</p>
<p>By the time late morning had rolled around, the sound of his front door unlocking and opening stirred him. The blinds in the bedroom were drawn, so it was still dark, and next to him Elliot slept soundly; he’d taken a care not to leave any noticeable marks on her neck (because that was bad one-night-stand etiquette) but he could see some already-fading bruising where he’d gripped her hips.</p>
<p><em>“I like it,”</em> she’d said, when he’d kissed them last night. <em>“I don’t break so easily.”</em></p>
<p>“Good morning, honey,” came Isolde’s voice, not quite cheerful so much as it was bright, drifting from out in the kitchen. “I brought coffee, and that stupid breakfast sandwich you like so much—”</p>
<p>“Isolde,” John tried to call hoarsely, stirring Elliot from her sleep, “don’t—”</p>
<p>“What is it?” she murmured, and sat up a little. “Who’s…”</p>
<p>And then, because it was <em>Isolde</em>—anyone else would have just knocked—the brunette came sweeping into the bedroom and yanked the blinds up so that sun was spilling through the room.</p>
<p>“—Joseph called me while I was at the bar, so I had to find a place where I could pick up, and anyway, I fucking cannot <em>believe</em> you—” </p>
<p>Isolde stopped. Elliot blinked for a second, and then it seemed to really sink in; she quickly pulled the blankets further up to her chin in alarm and said, “W-What—”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Sol said. “You ditched me for—<em>oh.</em>”</p>
<p>“Sol, <em>please</em>,” John said, “can you wait in the kitchen?”</p>
<p>“Are you his girlfriend?” Elliot asked, and she sounded horrified; John sighed and passed a hand over his face. “I’m—holy shit, I’m so sorry—”</p>
<p>“No!” Isolde exclaimed, and quickly extended her hand. “Fuck—<em>God</em>, no. I’m his business partner. Hi. Isolde Khan. We’re definitely not fucking, and for what it’s worth I’m dating his brother.”</p>
<p>Elliot, still groggy, shook her hand. “Okay, um—okay. I’m Elliot.”</p>
<p>“<em>Isolde,</em>” John tried again, the headache blooming behind his eyes, “<em>please.</em>”</p>
<p>“Okay, buddy,” she acquiesced, and ducked out of the room with a quick nice to meet you shot Elliot’s way before she closed the door behind her.</p>
<p>They sat there like that in the quiet, with only the faint sounds of Isolde rifling around in the kitchen. Elliot slumped back against the pillows and pressed her fingers against her eyes.</p>
<p>“She really is dating my brother,” John said after a minute.</p>
<p>“Should I go?” Elliot asked. “This is weird, right?”</p>
<p>“I don’t—I mean.” He shifted, kicking his legs out from under the blankets and pulling out some clothes. “It’s not, if you want to stay for a little. Isolde’s kind of a bitch, but only to me. I hear she’s pleasant conversation otherwise.”</p>
<p>Elliot took in a big breath, closing her eyes as laid there. “Sure,” she said after a minute, like it wasn’t the most absurd thing in the world so there was no reason not to. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll fucking stay for a while. Why not.”</p>
<p>“Good,” John said, and leaned over to look at her, pausing. “If it’s not weird for you to stay, is it not weird for me to kiss you?”</p>
<p>She opened her eyes to regard him amusedly. “You did a lot more than kiss me last night.”</p>
<p>“Just feeling it out.” He pressed his mouth to hers—and <em>fuck</em>, didn’t he want to just crawl back to bed and taste every inch of her, dragged in and around by the way her lips parted against his and her fingers came up to the back of his neck.</p>
<p>And then, from the kitchen: “Hey, John? I’m gonna… Go grab another coffee…”</p>
<p>He groaned and pulled back. “Take your time,” he told her, and then left the room, closing the bedroom door behind him.</p>
<p>Isolde stood in his kitchen like it was <em>her</em> kitchen, like she was supposed to be there (of course). He didn’t have time to marinate long on the absurdity of the situation; Isolde, perfectly composed and dressed like she was about to walk into the courtroom, busting into his flat like she lived there? It was almost comedic, his bad luck. </p>
<p>John came around the large island counter and hissed, “Isolde, <em>what the fuck</em>? You didn’t even knock, you just—”</p>
<p>“Oh, John, she’s <em>cute</em>,” Isolde said, completely ignoring him. “Like, too cute for a hook-up. I’d argue too cute for you, even but—”</p>
<p>“And Joseph called? Please say you didn’t tell him.”</p>
<p>“Lying is a sin, John,” the brunette intoned gravely. “Of course I told him.”</p>
<p>“Jesus Christ.”</p>
<p>Isolde stirred her coffee. “Don’t be a baby.”</p>
<p>“I’m <em>not</em>. We’re just lucky she’s cool with you barging in like you’re a scorned woman,” John told her flatly, and she grinned, sipping her drink as she slid his across the counter to him.</p>
<p>“<em>Cool</em> girl, huh?” she asked. “What’s <em>cool</em> girl drink for coffee?”</p>
<p>John was about to snark that he didn’t know yet, his mouth had been otherwise preoccupied for the night, when Elliot said from the doorway, “Just black, two sugars,” and he thought he might rather die. But she said it lightly, and she was in a pair of his joggers and a t-shirt that looked to fit her three sizes too big, and she flashed a smile when they looked at him so it might have been alright.</p>
<p>“Sure thing, baby,” Isolde replied, picking up her keys—John would have to remember to revoke her spare to his place later—and heading for the door. “I’ll be back in ten!”</p>
<p>The door clicked shut behind her, leaving John and Elliot in the quiet of his loft for a moment. It should have been dreadful that he set out last night to find a quick, self-indulgent hook-up; he’d found that, but now she was staying for coffee, and maybe breakfast, and she was wearing his clothes. That didn’t feel like a self-indulgent hook-up.</p>
<p>It wasn’t dreadful, though. It just felt <em>nice.</em></p>
<p>“Shirt looks good on you,” he said, plucking at the hem of it. Elliot hummed, leaned against the counter.</p>
<p>“Yeah?” she asked. “How good does it look <em>off</em> of me?” And then, playfully: “Do you think you can figure it out in ten minutes?”</p>
<p>He grinned, tugging her close by the shirt as he skimmed his fingers up beneath it, splaying against her warm skin. <em>Not a hook-up</em>, his brain reminded him as he leaned in and kissed her, long and luxuriously.</p>
<p>“I’d <em>love</em> to find out.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. hands all over</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Now in the strange purgatory of "what are we?" and "please fly 5 hours to see me", Elliot and John navigate the tedium of John having a job that is, on occasion, demanding. As best they know how.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Quick little smutty blurb set a bit of time after the first chapter. Elliot is a hellion and loves making John suffer for neglecting her, and John pays her back in turn.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You miss me?”</p><p>John says it playfully, lightly, into the phone; the second he does, he almost regrets it, because Isolde is giving his death-eyes from across the hall where she sits in her <em>own</em> office. <em>Almost</em> regrets it, but doesn’t—not really—because there’ve been plenty of times where he’s had to suffer through Joseph’s impromptu drop-ins to the office, so she can suffer his occasional phone call to Elliot.</p><p>It’s late, and his eyes burn. The clock at the bottom of his computer screen says <em>2:12 AM, </em>but he thinks it must be later than that with how exhausted he is; he and Isolde have been prepping a case all night, and if the fresh coffee sitting on her desk is any indication, she has every intention of finishing it <em>tonight,</em> no exceptions.</p><p><em>“Not really,” </em>Elliot replies. <em>“Kinda nice having the loft to myself, anyway.”</em></p><p>“That’s a lot of attitude.” John kicks his legs off of the desk and leans his elbows on the top, eyeing the stack of papers waiting for his attention. “Especially considering it’s <em>my</em> loft you’re having a little vacation in.”</p><p>
  <em>“Well, honey, I flew five hours to come and see you and you’ve barely been here.”</em>
</p><p>Isolde stands from her desk, coming across the hall to drop a fat stack on his desk next to the other one that hasn't disappeared, much to his chagrin. She points at the original stack and mouths, ‘<em>Done?’</em></p><p>He shakes his head. Her eyes narrow, and she replies, silently, <em>'Oh, yeah?’</em></p><p>“Yes, darling,” he says, mimicking her fifties-housewife-pet names, “but work stops for no man. Neither does Isolde, I’ve found out.”</p><p>“You knew what you were signing up for,” Isolde quips, and sets a new cup of coffee on his desk as well before she leaves, closing the door behind her.</p><p>
  <em>“Maybe I miss you a little.”</em>
</p><p>John whistles, twisting the coffee mug around on his desk. “How much?”</p><p>
  <em>“John.”</em>
</p><p>“My door’s closed.”</p><p>
  <em>“Oh, yeah? You just thought I’d play along?”</em>
</p><p>He grins, and he’s glad she can’t see him, because he <em>does</em> think that but she’d balk the second she saw his face. Truthfully, he’d been hoping to get more time with her this visit—but she’s self-sufficient, and even though she’s barely seen him in the last three days, she is <em>awfully </em>sweet when he comes dragging his ass back into the loft around five with only a few phone conversations to connect them while they’re apart.</p><p>“It doesn’t have to be a game,” he ventures, pitching his voice low. “It’s not a game to me how much I miss touching you, and I just want to hear that you feel the same way.”</p><p><em>“Is that so?” </em>Elliot’s voice is too flirty to be sincere, John’s sure, but he indulges in it anyway and hums his affirmation. <em>“You can get that smug look off of your face, I can feel that shit from here.”</em></p><p>“I’ve no idea what you are referring.” He knows he sounds distracted, at least a little, because he can hear Isolde on the phone out in the hall; muted, but she’s using her <em>Ms. Khan</em> voice, so she’s either talking to a client or she’s talking to Joseph and she’s mad.</p><p>He’s so distracted that he barely catches the slyness of Elliot’s tone when she says, <em>“It’s not like I get myself off at night, all alone in this big, empty loft, thinking about you.”</em></p><p>He’d been bringing the coffee up to his mouth when she spoke, and her words had him just about spitting it out. He’d always <em>thought</em> it’d be nice to do this with her, but he never thought she’d <em>do</em> it.</p><p>So, very articulately and intelligently and not stupid at all, he says, “Um,” as his brain fizzes static and all the blood goes rushing through his ears, mind idling.</p><p><em>“Oh,” </em>Elliot sighs, silky, and somewhere on the other end of the line he can hear the sound that he recognizes as her kicking the sheets down to her feet, <em>“but you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”</em></p><p>The folders sitting on his desk are waiting. Isolde had been polite enough to close the door, but he knows she expects him to get back on track soon. And yet—</p><p>And <em>yet</em>, all he can think about is the sound of Elliot sighing into the phone, and the idea that she’s alone in his loft, in his bed, pushing the sheets down so she has more freedom of movement and—</p><p>“Yes,” he manages, his voice coming out rougher than he’d like. “Yes, fuck, I’d—like that a lot.”</p><p>
  <em>“You'd like it if I was touching myself in your bed and thinking of you?”</em>
</p><p>John barely stifles the moan that tries to come out of him. It's just enough that he thinks he might not be able to stand it; there's at least 3 more hours of reading and proofing to do, and the thing he wants most is to throw his coat on and drive like a maniac back to his loft.</p><p>But he can’t. He can't, and so he's stuck in his office, trying to steady his breathing while he listens to Elliot’s shallow out a little, his body temperature steadily climbing.</p><p><em>“John?” </em>Her voice lilts inquisitively. He swallows hard.</p><p>“Here,” he says, watching Isolde pace down the hallway through the blinds on his window. “I'm here, baby, just—thinking about those sounds you're making.”</p><p>More shifting on the phone. Elliot sighs, and it pitches high, like it's almost a moan.<em> “Do you like them?”</em></p><p>“Yes,” he says automatically, immediately, because any second it feels like Elliot might change her mind; get shy, all of a sudden. “I love them.” And then, as he shifts in his seat: “If you <em>were</em> to get off thinking about me—”</p><p>
  <em>“Mhm.”</em>
</p><p>“—in that big, lonely loft—”</p><p>“<em>Sure.”</em></p><p>“—what would you be doing?”</p><p>She laughs, and it sounds breathless, and John feels his eyes flutter a little before he comes to a stand and starts pacing. He closes the blinds on his window, just for good measure, but that doesn't stop this nervous energy he has, thinking that any second Isolde is going to be pounding on his door asking him if he’s getting any work done.</p><p><em>“Touching myself the way you touch me,”</em> Elliot says, her voice silken. <em>“I’m in your shirt, and you know how you like to peel it away—”</em></p><p>“I do.”</p><p>
  <em>“—and it smells like your cologne, too, so when I close my eyes and slide my hand down and think about how you fucked me before you left for work today...”</em>
</p><p>John doesn’t need to be reminded, but he thinks about it anyway—thinks about how Elliot pulled him over while they were still in bed and moaned into his mouth, <em>please, John,</em> and dug her nails into his shoulder when he’d finished inside of her.</p><p>“Fuck,” he says, his voice hitching, desperate, “<em>fuck</em>, you love when I come in that sweet cunt, don’t you?”</p><p>Elliot whimpers her agreement into the phone. He hears her moan, <em>“Oh, John,”</em> and he thinks that this might be fine, that maybe he’ll stop himself from grabbing his coat and fucking her filthy on the nearest surface and just enjoy these sounds she’s making. Maybe, this will be fine.</p><p>And then she says, somehow sounding like she’s miserably turned on: <em>“It doesn’t feel as good as you when I do it.”</em></p><p>He can’t leave. He can’t leave, because Isolde will fucking murder him, because she will gut him and decorate her office with his entrails in a show of dominance, and he can’t leave but he fucking <em>moans</em>, because Elliot is fucking herself on her fingers in <em>his</em> bed, wearing <em>his</em> shirt, thinking about how <em>he</em> filled her up just that morning and it’s not fair.</p><p>“Hellion,” John says, voice pitching low. “This isn’t fair.”</p><p><em>“I thought you wanted</em>—<em>me to?”</em> Her voice hitches; it’s painfully endearing and sexy and all John can think about is getting his hands and mouth on her. <em>“I thought</em>—<em>hmmm,</em> <em>you wanted to hear how much I</em>—<em>how much I m-miss you</em>—”</p><p><em>Oh,</em> he thinks, and he realizes that she’s close. Already, just from this. Just from the sound of his voice and this little game they’re playing.</p><p>The room is too hot. His clothes are too tight. He debates the logistics of risking getting murdered.</p><p>He has to make an executive decision, so he does; he grinds out, “Slow <em>down,”</em> and she whines.</p><p>
  <em>“Why?”</em>
</p><p>“I don’t—” John swallows thickly, pressing his forehead to the wood of his door and lowering his voice. “I don’t want you to come yet.”</p><p>If he thinks about it, he can probably picture exactly what she looks like; hair tousled, face blushed and worrying her lower lip between her teeth, hips canting against her fingers and grinding to an <em>aching, </em>torturous pace.</p><p>“Did you?”</p><p><em>“Yes,”</em> Elliot sighs into the phone,<em> “I did—but</em> <em>it isn’t fair</em>, <em>I’ve been so good for you</em>.”</p><p>“I know,” he groans. “Fuck, I—”</p><p>The sound of Isolde’s heels snapping against the floor manages to drag him out of the haze of being painfully aroused. She raps on the door three times and says, “John? Why did you close the blinds?”</p><p>He sucks in a sharp breath, pulls the phone away from his ear, and opens the door.</p><p>“Just focusing,” he says, and he thinks he must sound like a fucking psycho beacuse his breath’s all fucked up. Isolde stares at him, arms crossed over her chest, head cocked to the side. “I <em>am.”</em></p><p>“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Isolde says, fingers fluttering over the bridge of her nose. “We’re gonna break. Don’t look at those papers. I’m going to go back to my apartment, let your brother fuck me straight to absolution—”</p><p>“<em>Please</em> don’t, I do not need to know that.”</p><p>“—and then we’ll regroup and finish prepping,” she finishes, all business. “Hour and a half. Fine?”</p><p>“Well,” John says, petulantly trying to remain composed despite the knowledge that his very sexy girlfriend is edged and waiting for him, “if you <em>want.”</em></p><p>“I do,” Isolde replies plainly. “And you can do whatever <em>you</em> want with that hour and a half.”</p><p>“Great.”</p><p>His business partner turns on her heel, grabs her coat from the nearby coat rack, and says over her shoulder, “An hour and a half only, John!”</p><p>“Yes, chief.”</p><p>As soon as she’s in the elevator, he lifts the phone back to his ear; Elliot’s been anticipating it, and when he does, she says, all sugar-sweet, <em>“Are you coming home for a little break?”</em></p><p>“No,” John replies. His voice is rough. “But you’re going to come here.”</p><p>
  <em>“I am?”</em>
</p><p>“Yes,” he says, pacing back into his office. “Put that long coat you have on. I’ll send a car, and you’ll come down here, and we’ll see how <em>good</em> you really are for me. Maybe you’ll get rewarded.” After a pause, after a moment of listening to the shuffling of Elliot coming to a stand, he adds, “<em>Only</em> the coat, Ell.”</p><p><em>“Yes sir,”</em> she murmurs playfully, spiking the temperature of his body again. <em>“How are my odds of getting rewarded looking?”</em></p><p>John sucks his teeth, trying to keep the words smooth coming out of him. An hour and a half is all the time he’ll get? He’s sure that it must be criminal, that he’ll only have that much time—even less, with the amount of time it’s going to take for her to get down to his office building—to enjoy Elliot.</p><p>It’s not ideal. But he’s certainly not going to <em>complain.</em></p><p>“Better by the minute.”</p><p>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p><p>It took ten minutes for the driver to pick Elliot up and bring her to the office. Ten <em>excruciating </em>minutes, in which John spent most of his time pacing and trying to figure out what it was exactly he wanted to do with his specific allotment of time. An hour and a half <em>seemed</em> like a lot of time, but when you only had that much time to spend indulging yourself in your out-of-state girlfriend who was only there for a few days before she had to go back to work policing backwater rednecks and hillbillies.</p><p><em>Lucky</em> backwater rednecks and hillbillies, who got to see her more than he did. Certainly, <em>that</em> was criminal too—though the thought immediately pushed to the forefront of John’s brain images of Elliot, sliding the metal of the handcuffs around his wrist, teeth catching his lip as she said, <em>and how do you propose you pay your ticket tonight, Mr. Seed?</em>, and he had to shake his head, lest he lose focus on the task at hand.</p><p>Yes. How best to enjoy her as he had her now. Which was, hopefully, wearing nothing except the long coat she’d brought to fend off the Autumn chill.</p><p>In fact, by the time Elliot had actually arrived, walking through the lobby and down the hall to where his office was, John had barely made any ground on actually mapping out what it was he wanted to do. Seeing her, face flushed with a lovely high-color—from the cold, and perhaps from her <em>previous activities</em>—and the coat cinched neatly into her waist did nothing to improve his mental faculties.</p><p>“I can’t believe you made me come all the way down here,” Elliot said, feigning innocence as she took a sweeping glance of his office. “You know, people will talk, having your driver come pick me up from your loft at two in the—”</p><p>John had closed what distance remained between them—having to breeze around the corner of his desk to do so—and as she spoke, he took her face into his hands and kissed her. It was the same voice she had been using to torment him, after all; the same voice that had been sighing into his phone about how her fingers just <em>weren’t as good as him,</em> how much she <em>missed him, </em>how she doesn’t <em>think about him while he’s gone</em>—</p><p>“They can,” John said against her mouth, feeling her pulse jump under his fingers when he trailed them down the pillar of her neck. “I’d like it if they did. <em>Mr. Seed had a lovely blonde visit him so very late last night—</em>”</p><p>Tugging her further into his office by the tie at her waist, he kicked the door shut and pulled on the fabric. It came undone quite easily; almost, he supposed, as though by design, and as his hands made deft work of the coat and pushed it from her shoulders, he pulled back to get a look at her.</p><p>“Miss Honeysett,” he purred, fingers plucking at black lace scantily adorning her, “I do believe I told you to <em>only</em> wear the coat.”</p><p>“Did you?” she asked. Her lashes fluttered as he gripped her hips, steering her toward the desk when the coat had fully pooled at the floor. “My mind must have been otherwise preoccupied.”</p><p>“Indeed,” John agreed, his mouth finding the spot on her neck that made her squirm and sigh, “<em>awfully</em> preoccupied. And what are we to do about that, hm?”</p><p>Elliot, perched on his desk, made quite the picture. The black lace ensemble she had donned was barely there at all, mere scraps of fabric that <em>hardly </em>covered anything—but covered <em>enough</em> that his fingers itched to rip them in half. He felt a little sigh escape him, an exhale of breath that billowed out of his chest almost serenely.</p><p>“While you do make the prettiest fixture on my desk by far,” he said as his fingers hooked deftly under the scrap of fabric stretching over her hip bone, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to do <em>something</em> about this...”</p><p>John’s voice trailed off as he planted his free hand against the top of the desk, as though to brace himself; and brace himself he did, to slide the fabric from her and let it drop to the floor.</p><p>“<em>Blatant,”</em> he rumbled, “<em>disobedience.”</em></p><p>With ease, he dropped to his knees, hooking his hands under her knees to drag her closer to the edge of the desk. When his mouth found the inside of her thigh, he could hear the sharp intake of her breath; but the second she took one of her hands off of the desk to tangle in his hair, he caught.</p><p>“Ah-ah.” John rumbled the scolding against her skin and pushed her hand back to the top of his desk. Oh, but he <em>was</em> exerting the <em>most</em> patience and self-control, he thought—something for which Elliot would almost certainly reward him for later. His gaze flickering back up to meet hers, he said, “No hands.”</p><p>“What?” she asked, sounding a little dazed as he moved up her thigh. “No—”</p><p>“Hands on the desk, and they stay on the desk,” he replied. “If you break the rules, I stop.”</p><p>“Stop—?” The question had barely left her mouth before he dragged her down, pressing his mouth to her; easing his movements when he heard her whimper, John flattened his tongue against her, dragging in slow, leisurely motions that belied the urgency coiling in tight in his stomach.</p><p>He could tell that she was biting back her sounds; when his eyes darted up to hers, fingers trailing along her thigh, her teeth had sunk into her lip and little wisps of hair were falling out of her ponytail, stark against the flush in her cheeks. Absolutely wanton and debauched—and when she dug her fingers into the lip of the desk and <em>moaned</em> because John gripped her hips and stilled her from gathering the friction she wanted, he pulled back.</p><p>“You’re doing <em>so</em> well,” he murmured. “Tell me the time.”</p><p>“<em>What?”</em> Elliot’s voice peaked a little, and John fanned his breath across her. “John, are you really—”</p><p>“Isolde only gave me an hour and a half,” he explained. “Be <em>good</em> and tell me the time.”</p><p>She exhaled a sharp little breath. When she leaned back a little to try and get a look at the clock, John leaned with her; moaned against her, sliding two fingers in and beckoning them against her in perfect time with the movements of his jaw.</p><p>“T-Three—” Her breath stuttered when John rumbled a <em>mmhmm</em> against her, and she swallowed thickly. “Three twenty-four—”</p><p>“Good.” John leaned back but kept his fingers pressed into her, moving them as slowly as his willpower would allow; even though every <em>inch of </em>him wanted her, even though his clothes needed to come off and the room had suddenly become much too hot with the taste of her on his tongue, he kept it slow. Torturously. “I’ve got plenty of time to admire how fucking <em>good</em> you look, spread out on my desk.”</p><p>“<em>John,”</em> and his name coming out of her mouth pitched prettily, just the way he liked; she rolled her lower lip between her teeth and said, “Would you just—just—already—”</p><p>“Just?” He was playing with her now, perhaps a little, kissing the inside of her thigh—a poorly neglected and unmarked expanse of skin, in his opinion—and sinking his teeth into it until she whimpered. “Just what, Ell? You <em>just</em> sound so pretty that I think I might do this the entire time I have you.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> <em>me,” </em>Elliot begged, “would you <em>just</em>. <em>Fuck me, already?</em>” And then, as an afterthought: <em>“Please.”</em></p><p>The juxtaposition of her incessant demand and her attempt at politeness would have been enough to make him drag it out further, if he thought he could stand to not be bending her over his desk for another minute—but he couldn’t. Not when she was looking at him like that, not when the restriction of wearing clothes suddenly felt so tedious that he was going to come unglued if he didn’t get out of them in that instant.</p><p>The blonde made a sweet sound when he slid his fingers from her, coming to a stand and bringing her to him; kissing her and bringing her hands up to signal that she was allowed, by the rules, to use them again, he grinned against her mouth as her fingers deftly undid the buttons of his shirt and skimmed along the exposed skin there.</p><p>John allowed himself the indulgence of it for just a moment; just long enough to feel her body relax before he turned her around and nudged her against the desk. She went obediently—more obediently than he thought she had done most anything for him—and as he quickly disposed of the rest of his clothing, his fingers gripped her hip and kept her pulled close.</p><p>“Hands stay,” he reminded her, husky and wanting against her skin. John’s mouth found the junction between her shoulder and neck as his hands gripped the slope of her hip. With her so prettily planted against his desk, he dug his teeth into her skin; and then he was pressing up into her, hot and tight and too much, and it felt like the air had gotten sucked right out of him in the wildfire that she made around her. No oxygen left for gasping, nothing but the smell of her, the feel of her, the <em>sound</em> of her sighing as though she were relieved to have him finally in her.</p><p>“<em>Fuck,”</em> John bit out against her skin, “I fucking—God, I missed you, these last few days—too much work, not enough taking advantage of having you here, gorgeous—<em>fucking</em>—girl—”</p><p>“M-Move,” Elliot gasped, digging her fingers into his arm, and then a delicious combination of words: <em>please John please baby fuck I want you please move feels so good please.</em> Just like that, in sweet, stuttered breaths that about had him coming undone.</p><p>“H-Had the audacity to make me—make me listen to you fuck yourself—on your f-<em>hhh—</em>fingers through the phone.” He swallowed back a low, throaty sound and bottomed out inside of her, digging his fingers into her hips. “I’m gonna make this—fucking l-last—”</p><p>The blonde moaned and arched back against him, trying to get any kind of friction; anything except sweet, vicious burning, but John laughed breathlessly against her skin; regards for the clock and their time limit had gone out the window.</p><p>“Missed hearing you like this,” he panted. He pulled out of her slowly, just to grind into her again, wicked-hot and hard and <em>so, excruciatingly slow.</em> “Is this what you were thinking of? When you were alone, touching yourself?”</p><p>“Yes,” she whimpered. John pulled her up, hand spanning the column of her so that he could pull her into a kiss as she said, “Yes, thought about you—thought about coming down here and having you fuck me on your desk, just l-like this—thought about it before tonight—”</p><p>“Good,” he moaned into their kiss as he picked up the pace a little, rewarded with the delighted sound that came out of her. There was no more luxuriating; the desk rattled with each connection of their bodies, the files Isolde had precariously placed on the edge of his desk sliding with a dull <em>thump</em> onto the floor. “So good for me, aren’t you, hellcat? So f-fucking—”</p><p>Somewhere in his brain vaguely registered the sound of the elevator in the lobby; he braced one hand against the edge of his desk and the other skimmed her lower lip.</p><p>“Quiet,” John rumbled, the words catching just between them as the sound of Isolde’s laughter drifted down the hallway. “Can’t let them hear h-how—fucking <em>pretty</em> you sound when you come with me inside you.”</p><p>Elliot whimpered at his words, lashes fluttering, but she pitched her voice soft and breathy; the stream of <em>yes please let me come please John let me come please,</em> had his pacing change from steady to punishing, until he felt her tightening—his own body sprinting, hurtling toward his finish as the blonde dug her nails into his forearm.</p><p>There was a knock at the door, just as Elliot hissed out, “<em>John,”</em> the furious whisper pitching sweetly and preluding a sound that would surely give them away; he thought, of course Isolde had to <em>know</em>, but all the same he pressed a hand over her mouth and purred against her ear, <em>come on, hellcat, come for me, come on, just like that.</em></p><p>She did; and the feeling of her fluttering, hitching breaths, the moan swallowed by the stifling of his hand, the way her body tensed and tightened in a wretchedly delicious way had him finding his own—he had to buried the sound into her shoulder, her neck, as Isolde called out from the other side of the door, “John, Joseph and I brought food?”</p><p>Her voice quirked up at the end, as if in question. John steadied his breath into Elliot’s skin, thankful that he had left the blinds shut but not <em>so</em> thankful he had been negligent enough not to lock the door.</p><p>“C—” He cleared his throat; it had gone a little hoarse. “Just a moment, Sol—”</p><p>Dropping his hand from Elliot’s mouth, he <em>felt</em> her try to stifle her laughter at the absurd situation.</p><p>“Shhh,” he hissed, but then <em>he</em> was trying not to laugh, listening to Isolde say something to Joseph on the other side of the door—of <em>course</em> his brother had come along, <em>of course</em>—before the sound of her shoes receding into the office across the hall from his echoed against the marble flooring.</p><p>“<em>Just a moment,”</em> Elliot mimicked, and he dragged his teeth against the crook of her neck as a rebuke. She stifled her delighted little cry, but only just before another knock came at the door.</p><p>“Yes,” John called, a little exasperated, disentangling himself from Elliot to gather himself and re-button; he only just managed to scoop her discarded underwear from the ground and slide it back onto her before he heard a most <em>familiar</em> voice.</p><p>“I just wanted to let you know,” Joseph said through the door, “we brought enough food for Elliot, too.” There was a pause, and then thoroughly amused: “If she would like to stay, anyway.”</p><p>“Oh,” Elliot whispered, as though there were anything left to give away, while cinching the coat shut and snug against her. “I—well—”</p><p>“Okay,” he replied, clearing his throat again—this time for nothing other than his own nerves, “yes, I’ll—let her... Let her know...”</p><p>Isolde said something from her office, and Joseph laughed, the sound drifting as he seemed to have retreated back into the room with her. John’s gaze flickered back to Elliot; she looked quite disheveled, her cheeks flushed and lips kiss and bite-reddened, and the lingering bloom of spots where his teeth had been too hasty against her skin.</p><p>He had thought before not to, when it had seemed to be just a one-time, post-break-up dalliance; but now, well. What was there to disguise or refrain from?</p><p>“I didn’t dress for dinner,” Elliot offered after a moment, and John barked out a laugh; it billowed out of him, so easily pulled by her, and she flashed him a grin.</p><p>“Anything you wear,” John replied, snagging her hand and pulling her forward, “is <em>suitable</em> for <em>dinner.”</em></p><p>“Not,” the blonde murmured, “dinner with your brother and business partner.”</p><p>“You’re right. They wouldn’t appreciate you like I do.”</p><p>She laughed just as he leaned forward to kiss her; when he opened the door and nudged her out into the hallway, hands on her hips, Isolde caught his eye from the office.</p><p>“Food?” Joseph offered, keeping his tone light and casual. “There’s plenty.”</p><p>Elliot waved, smiling and blushing. “No, thank you, I’m—I just stopped by for a minute, is all. Exhausted.”</p><p>“Of course,” Isolde intoned, quite somberly, though John thought it was perhaps more sly than he would have liked. “It’s quite late to have to tend to that one, isn’t it?”</p><p>“<em>Thank</em> you, Sol, but I’m taking Elliot home,” John called over his shoulder, nudging Elliot down the hall and out into the lobby. He knew that he would have liked for her to stay, that he wouldn’t have minded her staying for a little longer. But he also knew that sitting down to eat in what might be constituted as a winter coat and lingerie <em>only</em> was likely not the way she wanted to get to know his brother better.</p><p>“Okay,” Isolde replied, “just make sure you clean up your office when you get back. I can see the files all over the floor from here.” She paused. “<em>Gross</em> misconduct, if you ask me.”</p><p>“I didn’t, but thank you, yet again!”</p><p>Elliot laughed, and tried not to look like she thought it was <em>so</em> funny, but when they reached the elevator John snagged her hand and tugged her flush against him. As the doors slid shut, he pressed a kiss to her palm, and her expression softened.</p><p>“You,” he murmured, “are <em>entirely</em> too pleased with yourself. First the lingerie, now you’re laughing at that I have the poor misfortune of having to quiet you because my <em>brother</em> is standing just outside the room I’ve fucked you filthy in.”</p><p>Elliot brushed her fingers against his lower lip, admiringly. “What can I say?” Her lashes fluttered prettily.</p><p>“Maybe I will have to indulge in some <em>gross misconduct</em> more often.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. just like magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>New Year's Eve shenanigans in the midst of one of Elliot and John's many break-up phases.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><a href="https://proudspires.tumblr.com/post/639629921780744192/i-cant-stop-picturing-you-with-himher">Tumblr prompt:</a> “I can’t stop picturing you with him/her” + “you belong to me” + They were so distracted, they even missed the clock striking midnight.</p><p>No warnings! Just like, naughty language, John and Elliot have a steamy make out in a cramped bathroom. M for mature language and thoughts I guess!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s fifteen to midnight on New Year’s Eve, and Elliot Honeysett has no one to kiss.</p><p>Well, that’s not <em>entirely</em> true; she has a date, who is almost certainly anticipating a clock-strikes-midnight kiss, and in a pinch she can convince Joey for a midnight smooch so that she’s not standing around like a big fucking idiot at party in the city where she’s floundering like a fish out of water.</p><p><em>I shouldn’t have come,</em> she thinks idly, finger dragging at the rim of her glass where most of the alcohol remains untouched. She’s too stressed out to drink. There are two—<em>two</em>—instances in which she wants to drink herself to oblivion, and as she neither listening to her mother talk about the timeline for grandbabies nor has her abandonment-prone father cropped back up, so her stress only makes her crave sobriety more. <em>Can’t be spinning out of control, can we, if we can help it?</em></p><p>In fact, her date is making eyes at her from across the room, and Joey is somewhere out of immediate reach, and the boy—Dakota? Maybe?—is very nice, he’s <em>very</em> nice, and—</p><p>(And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it, that Dalton (???) is <em>nice</em>, but in a way that feels cloying, and his eyes are two degrees the wrong shade of blue and he keeps his facial hair close-trimmed and he doesn’t have a single lick of ink on his body, and these are significant problems that immediately remind her of the person that she <em>wants</em> to be kissing, which makes him so, so, <em>so</em> unattractive.)</p><p>—and he’s making his way across the house right that second, and Elliot doesn’t want to explain to him in a categorized list why she actually can’t kiss him (“Do you want it alphabetical, or more like…chronological?”), so she turns on her heel like she didn’t just make eye contact with him and beelines it out of the living room.</p><p>It’s a house party. That’s all it is. It’s a house party in the city, because Elliot and Joey are spending the holidays in Georgia with her mother and Joey said that she’d fucking die if they had to spend New Year’s Eve listening to Scarlet lament the lack of “good help” available “these days”. As if she has ever had anything less than pristine house staff.</p><p>So they came out to a house party. And Joey found her a nice boy, so that she can have someone to kiss at midnight.</p><p>And she doesn’t want to kiss him at all.</p><p>She moves so fast from the living room that she runs headfirst into a firm, solid body, promptly spilling the entirety of her drink all over the poor soul that had the distinct misfortune of being in her path. For a second, Elliot opens her mouth to apologize—<em>sorry, so sorry, fuck, I’m so sorry, how much was that shirt, I can buy you a new one</em>—but then her eyes land on that face and she promptly snaps her mouth shut.</p><p>“Jesus Christ, do you have any idea how much this—”</p><p>John is looking down at his shirt, drenched in vodka and something else, when his eyes finally meet hers. And <em>then</em> all irritation is wiped from his face—maybe not from his eyes, entirely—and a wicked grin splits across his expression. It immediately sends her heart fluttering, and she thinks maybe it’s just because she likes eyes exactly his shade of blue.</p><p>“Ell,” he greets her, his voice a slick purr, “you could have just <em>texted</em> if you wanted to get in touch.”</p><p>“I didn’t know it was you, <em>John</em>,” Elliot snaps, “and I wasn’t trying to spill my drink on your stupid shirt.” And then: “You look like a fuckboy in it, anyway.”</p><p>“It’s the Lacoste you picked out, last summer.”</p><p>“And you thought I didn’t pick it out to make fun of you?” she prompts, meticulously uninterested. It’s a careful facade which must be upheld at all times, of course—not caring about John Seed. “That’s very cute.”</p><p>The brunette fans the shirt away from his body, grinning at her, and the expression reaches straight to his eyes—blinks at her through those dark lashes, and for a second she forgets that she broke up with him two months ago because he’s insufferably full of himself, constantly impatient, and hates her job.</p><p>“Can’t believe you accosted me,” he <em>tsks</em>, undoing the top buttons of the polo.</p><p>Elliot says, “Don’t be a fucking baby. You wasted my whole drink.”</p><p>Pulling the shirt off over his head—because of <em>course</em> he fucking would, of course he doesn’t mind peeling it off <em>right there</em>, the narcissistic motherfucker—John slings the shirt across his shoulder and takes a step toward her. There’s already so little space between them, having been in close enough proximity to spill almost all of her drink on him instead of the floor, which means that he’s suddenly invading all of her personal space with that expensive cologne and the faint scent of vodka and—ah, yes. It had been a vodka soda she was drinking.</p><p>“Get you a new one,” John offers in a sleek rumble.</p><p>For a second, her brain short-circuits: John Seed, exceptionally handsome and insufferably egotistical, crowding up against her at a house party in an expensive neighborhood of Atlanta, fifteen (now ten) minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve, is her greatest weakness. Mostly, it’s that he’s shirtless, but the other things help too.</p><p>“With someone,” Elliot manages out, clearing her throat. “I mean—I’m here. With someone.”</p><p>John arches a brow loftily and opens his mouth, certainly about to reply that he doesn’t see anyone with her right <em>now</em>, when a hand glides onto the small of her back and she sees David smiling at her, bright and handsome and just. So sweet.</p><p>“You tryin’ to start your own party or something?” her date asks her amusedly, eyes glittering with warmth. He leans down and presses a kiss to her temple, closer to the top of her cheekbone. He’s been doing that all night. Inching closer and closer to her mouth with his shy little kisses.</p><p>“N-No,” Elliot says quickly. “John, this is—my…date.”</p><p>
  <em>Dalton? David? Dominic.</em>
</p><p>A moment lays, suspended between the party of three, where someone is clearly waiting for Elliot to introduce her date whose name she <em>cannot</em> remember for the life of her—and then she doesn’t. So her date laughs and picks up the slack easily and holds his hand out to John.</p><p>“Daniel,” he says, and Elliot quickly makes a mental note of that. “It’s nice to meet you, John.”</p><p>“Likewise,” John replies, though he’s not nearly as enthused as before. “Daniel’s a biblical name, isn’t it?”</p><p>Elliot groans. <em>“Don’t.” </em>When her date looks at her inquisitively, she sighs. “All of John’s siblings are named after Biblical figures.”</p><p>“That’s fun,” Daniel says, even though it isn’t. “How do you two know each other?”</p><p>“Dated,” John offers up, and as he goes to say, “Long-term, too,” Elliot interjects, “just for a wink,” and they look at each other.</p><p>Daniel clears his throat. He stares at Elliot and John for a moment before he goes, “Your glass is empty. Can I get you another drink?”</p><p>“Please,” she eeks out, amidst the burning humiliation that comes with having absolutely no control over the situation, and passes him her glass. Fuck, <em>where</em> is Joey? She can dig her own grave, but she’ll need someone to dump the dirt over her once she climbs in. “Thank you, David.”</p><p>He gives her another long, searching look, one that she doesn’t quite understand the intention of, before he walks off with the glass in his hand. After two seconds of him being gone, John is very <em>clearly</em> trying to stifle his laughter.</p><p><em>“What?”</em> Elliot grinds out. “If you’re about to say something narcissistic and cruel, John, he’s very handsome and I—”</p><p>“You called him the wrong name,” he says, gleefully.</p><p>“No I didn’t,” she replies instantly, but then the mortification washes over her, panic setting in. His name was <em>Daniel</em>. Not <em>David</em>. “No,” she says anyway, again, “I—said…<em>Daan</em>—”</p><p>“David,” the brunette clarifies. His eyes are bright. “You said David. His name is—and we can say it <em>together</em>, this time, with feeling—”</p><p>Elliot sucks in a sharp little breath. “Fuck you.”</p><p>“I’d love it,” John replies as quick as instinct, voice pitching low, “more than <em>anything.”</em></p><p>And there it is—wretched, vicious man, sinking his claws right back into her just like that, like it’s nothing, like she’s completely incapable of holding her own against a man <em>she</em> broke up with.</p><p>Her face flushes scarlet. She doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk. Where the <em>fuck</em> is Joey?</p><p>“Elliot,” John starts, but she clears her throat.</p><p>“Should wash out your shirt,” she says abruptly, snatching it from his shoulders and gripping it in her now-empty fist, “otherwise it’s going to be sticky and you’re going to bitch about it and send me an invoice.”</p><p>And she turns on her heel and marches to the nearest bathroom. <em>Anything</em> to get some space between her and John, anything to get her a little fucking breathing room. This whole thing had been a mistake from the get-go; she shouldn’t have ever agreed to coming to this party. But Joey is making out with a pretty red-head, she sees on her way to the bathroom, and it’s her duty, as a best friend wingman, to not end the festivities early.</p><p>Of course, taking the shirt to the bathroom had been a bad idea, because while it provides her a temporary reprieve from John’s closeness, he’s soon sliding into the bathroom behind her and shutting the door.</p><p>“Anyway, I’ve been having a great time,” Elliot says, which isn’t true, turning the water on cold and running her fingers under it for a minute even though she doesn’t need to. “He’s very nice. And—”</p><p>“I’m glad you’re here,” John interrupts, and he’s crowding up behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror, and he’s shirtless, and it’s so <em>fucking unfair</em>. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”</p><p>“We—” She clears her throat, sticking the shirt under the water. “Broke up.”</p><p>“So you’re going to ignore me?”</p><p>“Well I <em>work,”</em> she snaps. Her fingers scrub the polo uselessly. “I have a fucking <em>job</em>. And, I’ll remind you, I’m here with someone, so if you want to give me a little more—”</p><p>“Ell,” he murmurs, his voice low, his mouth against her ear, “are you trying to make me jealous?”</p><p><em>Yes,</em> everything in her says as his hands cage her in against the sink, just the way that he knows she likes. “I’m not that petty.”</p><p>“It’s working.” He makes a low, despondent sound, the timbre of it rumbling against her skin, and it’s so <em>fucking ludicrous</em>, how can someone be <em>so attractive when they’re complaining?</em></p><p>Elliot slaps her hand down on the faucet to stop the water and turns around, steeling herself against him. “I’m <em>not</em>—”</p><p>“<strong>I can’t stop picturing you with him</strong>, and I hate it,” John says, their foreheads touching and their noses brushing—and it’s <em>so</em> unfair, so fucking unfair, he is <em>so</em> attractive and she misses the way that he kisses her. She’s fucking weak and she hates it. “Is that what you want, hellcat? A nice boy named Daniel to mix you a drink and kiss you at midnight?”</p><p>“Fuck,” Elliot says, about to say <em>You</em>, but he’s kissing her. His hands immediately go to her hips through the flimsy black silk of her dress and he hoists her onto the sink’s counter so that he can sidle between her legs, <em>closer closer closer,</em> always discontent with how much of her skin is within reach.</p><p>He kisses her like he’s hungry—a man, starving, for <em>her</em>, Elliot Nobody Honeysett, backwater hicktown Deputy with nary a designer anything to her name, but he’s hungry for her all the same. He kisses her, and from there on out it’s No Man’s Land: there’s no Joey, no crowd of people, no Nice Boy Dalton (Daniel) to make sure she’s behaving herself, and so she knots her fingers in his hair and kisses him back.</p><p><em>Stupid,</em> she thinks, even when her lips part for him almost immediately, especially when she moans into his kiss because his teeth drag on her lip. <em>Stupid, stupid fucking girl, you can’t, you can’t.</em></p><p>But she is. John’s breath fans hot and silky against her neck and she feels her lashes flutter, his hands sliding up under the hem of her dress, and it’s so fucking loud—loud, and hot, and the sink started running again because she bumped it, that neither she nor John pay any attention to the countdown starting outside.</p><p>“I don’t think you do,” John rumbles, voice thick and laden with desire. “Want a <em>good boy</em>. Do you, Ell?”</p><p>“Shut the fuck up,” she grinds out, “and kiss me, fuckface.”</p><p>He grins against her mouth and yanks her hips against his. It’s tight; the bathroom’s small, meant to be a quick stop, and certainly in a house like this there’s a bigger master bathroom that would be much more comfortable, if they could just—</p><p><em>Stop,</em> she thinks furiously, <em>stop mapping out a route to get fucked in.</em></p><p>A whimper pitches out of her when John slides his arm under her and hauls her closer still. Her fingers dig into his bare shoulders, and he says, “Love when you make that sound, Ell, so fucking good—no good boy for you, isn’t that right?”</p><p>“No,” she gasps obediently against his mouth. Later, she will think back on the absurdity of the moment: she has a perfectly nice boy waiting to kiss her come midnight waiting outside, and she and John are making out like fucking teenagers in a tiny, cramped bathroom.</p><p>Yes, later, she will think back on the absurdity of the moment, and feel a great deal of shame. For now, she thinks only of John, and the way he grips her hips with his hands until she moans and the way he says, “<strong>You belong to me,</strong>” and how if anyone else said that shit, they’d get clocked in the fucking face, but with John it’s—</p><p>Different. </p><p>It’s <em>always</em> different.</p><p>The whole thing is all very distracting. John, bunching her skirt up around her hips so that he can get her <em>closecloseclose</em>, ever craving her touch, and her ever craving to be touched; John, breathing her name against her mouth; John, John, John, doing anything, doing <em>literally anything</em> is so distracting and all-consuming that it’s like there’s no oxygen left in the room anymore for her to breathe.</p><p>“Fucking missed you,” he sighs, kissing her palm, the inside of her wrist. “You know I can’t get enough of you. So tell me you missed me, too—”</p><p><em>Went to wash out his shirt,</em> she’ll tell David, <em>and we got distracted.</em></p><p>That’s a good way to put it. <em>We’re distracted,</em> Elliot thinks, gliding her hands along his shoulders and kissing him again. <em>That’s all. Just distracted.</em></p><p>They’re so distracted, they even miss the clock striking midnight.</p><p>But at least she got her kiss.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. heart of glass, mind of stone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>for the tumblr prompt: "mind washing my back for me?" john/elliot, pre-cult au!</p><p>warnings: ugh this is a yucky (but good) little piece. lots more exposition on elliot’s past trauma with her shitty boyfriend. she never says explicitly the really terrible awful thing that he did to her, but there are elaborations on the abusive relationship, the psychological terror, threats of violence, etc. also should include a warning that the end kinda takes like a weird turn into murder territory, a little, lol.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Elliot was the kind of woman who didn’t talk about her exes very much.</p><p>It was nice. John wouldn’t have minded, once in a while, if she’d let him glean a <em>little</em> insight into what her romantic life had been before him. But the only thing that he knew was from that one conversation he’d had with Mason on the phone, and the fact that Elliot’s mother still harbored photos of Elliot and poor Staci Pratt at their high school dances.</p><p>Regardless, he would prefer that she didn’t talk about them versus her talking about them <em>all the time.</em></p><p>John had been stuck listening to his brothers bicker over dinner; though he enjoyed his visits back to Hope County—not only because they allowed him some time with Elliot—they <em>were</em> beginning to get more and more taxing as time went on. Time away from the city meant time with his family, but it also meant that Isolde was left to shoulder a lot of the work by herself, and did not enjoy the burden of the workload belonging to <em>two</em> people.</p><p>“Are you going to pick up the hellcat?” Jacob asked, leaning against the doorway of his cabin as John trudged out into the late evening. Even now, even this late in the summer, the air felt hot and sticky for hours after the sun had gone down.</p><p>“Yeah,” John said, glancing at his phone in his palm as it lit up vibrating. “She’s called a few times now. Probably—”</p><p>“—doesn’t know why you’re spending the majority of your time in town listening to us two fuckers?” Jacob supplied dryly, clearly still irked from his less-than-pleasant <s>argument</s> conversation with Joseph. What it was about, John had lost track of nearly a fourth of the way in.</p><p>“You said it,” John demurred, hitting the green accept call button, “not me. But I should probably—hi, baby, I’m—”</p><p>The other end of the line was a rush of sound. It took his brain about five seconds to realize that it was Elliot hyperventilating, her breath coming out of her in short, violent bursts, breaking static in the call.</p><p>“Ell?” he asked, turning away from Jacob and making his way to his car in favor of answering the redhead’s concerned expression. “Elliot, what’s—”</p><p><em>“—come here, please come here, please—</em>”</p><p>“I’m coming,” he said quickly, fumbling for his keys. “Take a breath—”</p><p><em>“I <strong>can’t,”</strong></em> and she moaned the word, agonized, into the phone call, wrenching the sound straight through him. <em>“He was <strong>here, </strong>John, he was in my fucking house, he was touching m-my—t-touching m-my st—my <strong>things</strong>—”</em></p><p>John swore under his breath, finally managing to climb into the car and start it. He was thankful the weather was only hot, and not something else—storming, thundering, the kind of thing that would put Elliot more on edge or do something <em>worse</em>, like potentially knock the power out.</p><p>“I’m on my way, just stay on the phone with me,” he said, pitching the car into reverse and pulling out of the driveway. “Who was in your house? Elliot? Take a breath, okay, I’m—did you call the police?”</p><p><em>“Yes,”</em> Elliot replied, between gasping lungfuls of air. <em>“Yes, I called the—the police. ‘S just Whitehorse and Joey, and—”</em></p><p>“I know.”</p><p>
  <em>“They’re coming too.”</em>
</p><p>“Good. Who was in your house?” He pulled out onto the highway, thinking that for once it was a good thing that you could drive five minutes in any direction and get to where you needed to go, probably. In this area, at least. Jacob’s cabin was, unfortunately, a bit further out than just five minutes—but that was okay. Speeding at nine at night was fine.</p><p>
  <em>“It’s all my stuff, John, it’s all—it’s out of place, I put it exactly where it’s supposed to be and none of it’s—”</em>
</p><p>Elliot clearly was in no space to give any concrete information about nearly anything, so he stopped asking. He stopped asking who had been in her house, and instead just had her stay on the phone until Hudson and Whitehorse got there, at which point the phone got handed over to somene else.</p><p>
  <em>“Seed?”</em>
</p><p>“Yes,” John said, trying to keep the tension out of his voice. Hudson did not like him, and had made that clear many times. “What’s it—her doors? Windows? Who was—”</p><p><em>“Can you hurry up and get here?” </em>Hudson’s voice came out clipped, but lacked the usual hostility she reserved for him and only seemed tense. <em>“How far are you?”</em></p><p>John glanced at the road. “Ten minutes?”</p><p>
  <em>“Okay. We’ll wait.”</em>
</p><p>And then she hung up.</p><p>The next ten minutes—well, probably less, considering he pressed the gas pedal to the floor of his car—passed in something close to agony, and by the time he was pulling into Elliot’s driveway it felt like he’d spent an eternity in his car. As soon as he was closed the door, the front door of Elliot’s two-story little farmhouse was swinging open and letting him inside.</p><p>“Ell,” he said, relieved to see her; face flushed and eyelashes dark with the threat of unshed tears, standing aimlessly in the middle of her living room, but <em>there.</em> Tangible. Immediately his hands reached for her and her shoulders scrunched up, mouth twisting viciously. John stopped short, hesitating, and then said, “It’s me.”</p><p>She blinked rapidly. Her lip trembled. He had <em>never</em> seen her like this—not a single time in the eight months they had been together, not in the times they had been together-not-together, not <em>ever.</em> She spoke about the clinical abandonment she had experienced from her father with the same kind of unfeeling apathy someone would discuss a piece of art they held disdainfully at arm’s length.</p><p>The house did not look broken into. There was no broken glass. When John’s gaze did a sweep of the living room, he saw nothing toppled or shattered, only the cozy clutter of a lived-in home.</p><p>John lifted his hand, and Elliot’s eyes—distant, and far away—flickered uneasily to the offending limb. She said, “I don’t—”</p><p>It was a warning, the words coming out of her mouth. John dropped his hand. She had a strange, wild look about her, like she wasn’t quite there but she wasn’t quite gone, either, like something was shrieking in her head and wouldn’t stop. The expression on her face said that she didn’t recognize him, not right away, and it made his stomach wrench painfully.</p><p>“Let’s get some water,” Hudson suggested, her hand coming to lay flat in the space between Elliot’s shoulder blades. John watched the brunette guide his girlfriend from the living room, leaving him alone with Whitehorse, a tense silence stretching for a moment before the older man cleared his throat.</p><p>“What the fuck is going on?” John demanded.</p><p>“Honeysett thinks someone broke into the house,” Whitehorse said after a moment. “Said she came home and the—stereo was playing some song on repeat, door unlocked, things...Out of order.” He paused, grimacing. “No sign of forced entry. Searched the house. It’s empty.”</p><p>“There was a song playing,” he reiterated. “And things were out of order. What song? What <em>things?”</em></p><p>“Some oldie.” He cleared his throat again, reaching down and hitting the power button on the stereo. “It’s like this—”</p><p>The chipper, vibrant tune of a song that sounded like it was right out of the 50’s started playing. Sweet little voices, harmonizing carefully, rang around in his head.</p><p>
  <em>I know you belong to somebody new, but tonight, you belong to me!</em>
</p><p>“Some oldie,” Whitehorse reiterated, shrugging helplessly. “I thought maybe it was like—the power kicking off and on, you know how sometimes that—restarts electronics?”</p><p>“Uh-huh,” John gritted out.</p><p>The older man paused for a moment. “But it’s a CD,” he elaborated. “It’s, uh—she says she doesn’t...own it.”</p><p>
  <em>Although we’re apart, you’re part of my heart, and tonight, you belong to me!</em>
</p><p>“So someone broke into her house,” John began, “moved her stuff around, put a fucking CD with a creepy old song on it in her stereo—”</p><p>“Well,” Whitehorse began, “there’s no sign of forced entry—”</p><p>“I’m <em>guessing </em>that they were not <em>invited in</em>, sheriff!”</p><p>“Mr. Seed, I’m gonna ask you to take it down a notch,” Whitehorse snapped. “I am <em>only</em> stating what I found upon coming to the house.”</p><p>
  <em>Way down by the stream, how sweet it will seem, once more just to dream in the moonlight; my honey I know—</em>
</p><p>A variety of insults came to mind. He was fuming—brimming with <em>anger, </em>not only that someone had taken it upon themselves to apparently terrorize Elliot in a seemingly very personal way, but that it was being regarded as—</p><p>As—</p><p>Well. Frivolous, perhaps. Or a figment of her imagination.</p><p>John opened his mouth to say something else—perhaps, he thought, along the lines of telling Whitehorse to go fuck himself—when Elliot came out of the kitchen.</p><p>
  <em>Way down by the stream, how sweet it will seem, once more just to dream in the moonlight.</em>
</p><p>“Why the fuck is this back on?” she demanded.</p><p>“I was showing Mr. Seed what—”</p><p>“Turn it <em>off,”</em> Elliot seethed. “Fucking—turn it <em>off, </em>turn that shit—”</p><p>
  <em>But tonight, you belong to me, just to little old—</em>
</p><p>John moved quickly, jamming his finger into the power button. Visible relief flooded Elliot’s face, and she pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, taking in a shuddering breath.</p><p>“Honeysett,” Whitehorse said after a moment, “I’m gonna need to know what—”</p><p>“Please leave,” Elliot interrupted, not taking her hands off of her eyes. “Please get out of my home.”</p><p>The older man paused. He began, “For the report, I—”</p><p>“I know how stalking laws work, Whitehorse,” she bit out, finally. “There’s not enough proof to do <em>anything. </em>Please leave. Please, just—”</p><p>“I’ll make sure she fills it out on Monday,” Hudson said after a moment, giving Elliot’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll do it together, to make sure we don’t forget anything. Okay?”</p><p>The blonde’s hands finally dropped from her face. She stared at the floor for a moment, the muscle of her jaw clenching and loosening in a slow, painful rhythm before she nodded once, shortly. It was a plain and apparent dismissal; <em>sure, fine, whatever it takes to get you out of my fucking house.</em></p><p>Whitehorse and Hudson departed, with the latter giving Elliot one firm, tight hug and asking her, “Are you okay if I go?” before she took a second silent nod for approval. When they had gone, the door closed behind them and the house quiet and near-empty, John turned back to his girlfriend, watching her cautiously.</p><p>Elliot swallowed thickly. “I’m not crazy.”</p><p>“I know,” John said.</p><p>“Whitehorse thinks I’m crazy.”</p><p>“He’s—old,” he replied, after a moment of searching for the right word. “Practical. Factual.”</p><p>“I don’t <em>own</em> this fucking CD,” Elliot told him, as he began crossing the space between them. “I came home and my door was unlocked. I never leave it unlocked. The blanket was on the other side of the couch when I left. The magazines were swapped around on the table. My books are—I always keep them in an order that’s—well, that’s not important, but—”</p><p>John reached up, careful, and brushed loose strands of hair from her face. “It’s important to me.”</p><p>She paused. Her eyelashes fluttered and she sniffed. “I keep them in an order that’s chronological, from when I bought them. Each one is dated on the inside cover. And he—” Another pause, before she carefully articulated, “And <em>Mason</em> used to like to do this thing where he would...Move them around. Change the order, when I was gone. And then pretend like he didn’t know what I was talking about, so I thought was going fucking insane, or that someone was getting into my house when I was gone, and—”</p><p><em>Ah, </em>he thought, as Elliot’s fingers curled into his shirt, gripping and crumpling the fabric in an effort to ground herself, <em>so that’s why we don’t talk about Mason.</em></p><p>“And the <em>song,”</em> she continued, her voice rasping now with her distress. “He used to play this fucking song all the time in—in his apartment, he would—because it was just saying ‘you belong to me’ over and over, and the night that he—t-that he—to <em>me, </em>he—”</p><p>Something in her voice wobbled uncertainly. Her mouth twisted, teeth gritting and biting down hard against the words that she didn’t want to say.</p><p>He <em>knew. </em>Or at least, he <em>thought</em> he knew what she was going to say. And he didn’t want to hear it, because the second that he did, he was going to find Mason and—</p><p>“Let’s go,” he suggested quickly, tucking that venomous train of thought away for later. Not gone, just...For later. Safe-keeping. He smoothed his hand down the pillar of her neck, giving her shoulder a squeeze, and her hand came up to grip his wrist. Each touch was slow, meticulous, intent on making sure he didn’t spook her. “I rented a really nice room in the city a few hours away. We can stay there instead.”</p><p>“You rented a hotel room?” Elliot asked, eyeing him. “Why? You always—”</p><p>“In the instance that your taste in men changes quickly,” John said, “and you throw my out in a fit of rage.”</p><p>“Well.”</p><p>“I’m not far off, am I?”</p><p>She didn’t smile, but her expression softened, and she nodded. “Okay. Yeah. We can—yeah.”</p><p>John pressed a little kiss to her temple. “Go wait in the car, and I’ll get your bag, okay?”</p><p>Much to his surprise, Elliot moved obediently, taking the keys from him and walking out of the house. She was probably relieved to get outside of it, this place that had temporarily become her own personal torture chamber. He watched her check all four windows of the car—just to be safe—before climbing into the passenger seat, the headlights blinking when she locked herself in.</p><p>He moved quickly, stuffing clothes and overnight things into a duffel bag that he fished out of her closet. He didn’t dwell long; it felt like every second he spent packing things was another second Elliot spent in frigid uncertainty in the car, and by the time he was tossing the bag into the back seat, she had turned the air on medium. Lukewarm puffs of it collected in the dip of his collarbone, at the nape of his neck, where sweat had gathered.</p><p>“You didn’t see anyone?” Elliot asked after a moment, when he was pulling out of the driveway. He paused, but didn’t let the question unseat him the way it wanted to.</p><p>“No, baby,” John replied, snagging her hand with his. “I didn’t see anyone. Now, what do you want to listen to?”</p><p>━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━</p><p>Two and a half hours later, Elliot was curled up in the clawfoot bathtub adjacent to the master bedroom of the hotel room—more like a mini-apartment in its own right—and decompressing.</p><p>As much as she could, anyway. Even when they were well out of Hope County, the blonde’s shoulders remained wretchedly tight, and occasionally a hand-gesture of John’s as he told a story would result in a flinch that she tried very hard to cover up with a scratch of her cheek or a cough.</p><p>He left her alone in there, for a little while; halfway through a rum and coke and sending off a short text to Jacob that things were ‘OK’, he made his way inside the bathroom. The room was humid, perfumed with the smell of lavender, and as he approached, Elliot glanced at him over her shoulder.</p><p>“What’re you drinking?” she asked, the question a little funny given the visceral gut reaction she’d been experiencing just a few hours prior. John offered her the glass, and she took a sip, face scrunching up. “Yuck.”</p><p>“How’s your bath?” he asked, taking the glass back and setting it on the floor by the tub. She regarded him through tired flutters of her eyelashes.</p><p>“Lonely,” Elliot replied. “Join me?”</p><p>He tucked some damp hair away from her face, behind her ear. “I’ve got a terrible problem telling you no.”</p><p>“I’m counting on it.”</p><p>Shedding his clothes, John shimmied into the steaming water—still <em>skin-prickling</em> hot—behind Ell and skimmed his fingers along her shoulders, giving a little squeeze.</p><p>“Fucking Christ, this water’s hot,” he said, planting a careful kiss against her neck.</p><p>“Fire and water are both considered cleansing,” Elliot murmured tiredly. “Tried to find both. <strong>Mind washing my back for me?”</strong></p><p>John hummed into her skin, reaching for the scrub and dunking it into the water before putting a generous amount of scented bodywash onto it. As he worked, it felt like Elliot was working up to something—like she was trying to figure out how to say something, welling up between them that she couldn’t pin down.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, her voice barely breaching a whisper. “When—back at the house, I didn’t...”</p><p>Her words trailed off. He dragged the scrub along her back, working slowly.</p><p>“Recognize,” Elliot finished after a moment, “you.” She paused again, clearing her throat. “I didn’t remember, um. Calling you.”</p><p>“When I was on my way?”</p><p>“Yeah.” She shifted in the water, and then turned to look at him, peering at him over her shoulder and through her lashes. “I didn’t remember that.”</p><p>John blinked. “Okay.”</p><p>“I do now,” she clarified. “But the—like the stress of, um, being alone in that house—”</p><p><em>That</em> house, she said, not <em>my home</em> but <em>that house, </em>like the evening’s events had somehow made it suddenly a place that was no longer hers but just an object, a space, in which she had once existed.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Elliot said again, her voice breaking a little. “I <em>know</em> Mason was in my house. I <em>know</em> he was, I’m not crazy, and the fucking—the things he did to me, John, I—he’s not supposed to be able to come within a hundred feet of me, even, but—”</p><p>John reached for her, winding his arms around her waist under the water and tugging her against him. He buried his face into her neck, dragging his thumb along the scars he had memorized time and time again, with his mouth and his hands and his eyes.</p><p>“He said he was going to kill me,” she whispered after a moment. “And the worst part is—”</p><p>She cut herself off again, swallowing thickly.</p><p>“The worst part is that I said, <em>not if I fucking kill you first.”</em></p><p>So their brains <em>did</em> run the same. Like him, she looked at Mason and her instinct was to extinguish, wipe him from the surface of her memory and purge him from the world entirely. John tightened his grip around her, exhaling into her skin, lightly perfumed from the bath.</p><p>“Ell,” he murmured, pressing his mouth to temple, “you know that I would give you anything you asked for, right?”</p><p>The blonde stilled in his arms a little. Her eyelashes fluttered absently, registering his words in her brain for what they were—a promise, without saying so explicitly.</p><p>“You only have to ask,” he continued, keeping his voice low, pulling her hair to the opposite shoulder so that he could kiss the newly-revealed skin there. “I mean it.”</p><p>“Yeah,” she replied. She was looking at the water, the opalescent bubbles shifting and popping on the surface, and then she said, “Anything?”</p><p>John tugged her further back against his chest and reached up from the water, tilting her chin so that they were looking at each other. Their noses brushed, and her eyes flickered shut, leaned into his touch; no longer some wild, vicious girl struggling to recognize him in the haze of her panic, but just—</p><p>Just Elliot. Just his Elliot.</p><p>“Anything.” Their lips brushed as he spoke the word, romantic, nearly-kissing. “You only have to ask.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. cloud nine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>john/ell + sneaking away to a hidden corner to share a secretive kiss + a kiss so desperate that the two wind around each other, refusing to let go until they are finished. requested by @faithchel on tumblr!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(obviously) set pre/no-cult au, established relationship, a little spicy but nothing explicit, with a tiny glimpse into elliot and john's life without the cult mucking things up.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>John knows that social gatherings stress Elliot out.</p><p>He knows, and yet here they are: suffering through one anyway, because Elliot has zero ability to tell her mother <em>no</em> when she doesn’t want to do something, even though they both know they’re going to spend the entire time listening to Scarlet Honeysett make passive-aggressive jabs at literally anything that has to do with John and Elliot’s decision to remain in a relationship with him.</p><p>They’re surrounded by Scarlet’s ex-debutante friends, who had come up from Georgia for some annual-something-or-other, the Hudsons, and a few other people he doesn’t recognize; John can’t be bothered to remember, because a handful of them like to fawn over him, but the <em>one woman</em> he wants to appreciate him is resolutely and stubbornly being withholding. Certainly, Elliot’s mother gleans some kind of enjoyment of dangling her approval just out of his reach.</p><p>It’s about an hour into the gathering when John realizes it’s become some kind of test. </p><p>He <em>knows</em> Elliot’s testing him, because they’re sitting around a table full of Southern ladies gossiping and fawning over John (save for one, of course; Scarlet would never be caught dead giving him a shred of attention), and Elliot’s childhood friend and her parents, and complete strangers, and she <em>won’t stop torturing him</em>. It’s unlike her to be even playfully flirtatious with him in front of her mother, but this is entirely different.</p><p>It starts innocently enough. It’s hot out—summer in Hope County always is—so when Elliot leans over to him and asks for one of his ice cubes out of his glass, it barely crosses John’s mind that she has a full cup of her own; too late, he realizes that she’s playing a game, because instead of just accepting the ice cube like a normal person she takes it from his fingers with her fucking mouth.</p><p>He feels her tongue flicker out against the pads of his fingers, and she flutters her lashes. John says, voice pitching low instinctively with want, “<em>What</em> are you doing?”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Ell replies innocently, having crunched the ice cube and swallowed. “It’s hot.”</p><p>It <em>is</em> hot, and the cherry-red of her little sundress is a little too much for John to tolerate—more scandalous than probably her mother likes—and he replies in a rumble kept between just the two of them, “You’re in a <em>mood</em> today.”</p><p>She laughs. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”</p><p>Before he can elaborate—preferably, with his hands and mouth—one of the debutantes drags him into another long, withering conversation, effectively reminding him that he’s meant to be behaving himself and not thinking about the ways he’d like to busy himself with Elliot.</p><p>But it’s nice, even if it drags. Most of Scarlet’s friends remark upon how happy they are that Elliot has found such a nice man, such a <em>good influence</em> on her after a string of shitty ex-boyfriends. It takes all of John’s self-control not to laugh at the insinuation that he’s a good influence on her—he, who had suggested perhaps they skip Scarlet’s little garden party to fuck in the car.</p><p>“Fruit?” Elliot asks lightly, suspiciously un-offended at the idea that John might be more morally devout than she. As he busies himself with his drink, she’s tilting the tray of fruit in his direction, and he shakes his head, trying to balance answering her while Scarlet’s friend Delia gushes to him about how happy she is that Elliot’s found a good man.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he says, scanning the table and finding Elliot’s mother preoccupied. <em>Thank God,</em> he thinks, because he’s just about at his limit and Elliot finally seems to be stopping this little game she’s playing. He’s in the middle of telling Delia about his experience working in Atlanta when he catches Elliot out of the corner of his eye—she’s sucking stray juice from her index finger like it’s nothing,  like it’s <em>normal,</em> like it doesn’t immediately make his blood spike to see her batting her lashes at him as she slips her finger from her mouth with a wet sound.</p><p>The afternoon suddenly seems to stretch out much longer ahead of him; endless, almost, now that he’s faced with this blatant violation of their cardinal rule—<em>no fucking around at Scarlet’s house</em>. It’s Elliot’s rule, of course, and yet here she is, going out of her way to make this afternoon social a thousand times more unbearable. But now he’s going to have to sit around and wither away at the incessant drag of mindless conversation while she’s doing <em>this?</em></p><p>If he thought that she had been torturing him before, it’s certainly worse from there on out; Elliot enjoys watching him clench his jaw through polite society, and any chance to drag his attention to her mouth, to the playful dip of her sternum exposed by her dress is taken. He’s sure that he only takes his eyes off of her for a maximum of three times over the next two hours.</p><p>“Ell,” he says, after he listens to her moan in delight from a particularly delicious strawberry, “help me get these dishes out of the way, won’t you?”</p><p>“Sure,” Elliot replies agreeably. She’s acting like she doesn’t know what she’s been doing, which is just about as untrue as can be because the second they get inside and the empty plates set aside, she’s kissing him. The kitchen is quiet and air-conditioned and perfectly out of view of the party outside, which means John wastes very little time in pressing her back against the counter and sliding his hands under the skirt of her sundress; and she’s kissing and kissing him, hungry and desperate and her fingers twisting in his hair until he feels like she’s a wildfire eating away at all the oxygen between them.</p><p>“What happened to the ‘no fucking around at Scarlet’s’ rule?” he asks.</p><p>“I reconsidered,” Elliot replies breathlessly. “After all, maybe it’s—m—more enjoyable if we can—”</p><p>John grinds out into the kiss, “You’re a <em>wicked</em> thing, Elliot Honeysett,” and he feels her laugh against his mouth. Even with her arms looped around his neck, she hasn’t loosened her grip yet; she seems reluctant to let him go, just as he is for her, so they stay like that—wound together and tangled in a situation more compromising than Elliot would normally allow in a place where anyone could walk in at any moment.</p><p>The blonde snags his lower lip with her teeth and then soothes the sting with a follow-up kiss, hot and open-mouthed and quickly evaporating any relief the air conditioner might have given him.</p><p>“Well,” she says into the kiss, “maybe you’re not that <em>good</em> of an influence on me, <em>John.</em>”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come hang out with me on my <a href="https://proudspires.tumblr.com/">tumblr!</a> I'd love to have more friends. ♡</p></blockquote></div></div>
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